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A week with RuPaul

(Via Georges LeBar)

I spent (roughly) the last week of 2011 with RuPaul at his place in the "Birds" section of the Hollywood Hills. He was a generous host, and not just with his time (he was inclined to pay for everything, and also gracious and unwilling to engage in one of those considerate play fights when I wouldn't allow him to). As a result, I wrote a profile for work, "The Tao of Ru." Of course, there were several things that couldn't make it into the article and so below is a brief list of outtakes...

Sporadic reader

 

Above is an interview with Simon Doonan that I did a few weeks ago. I love him. In order to make this coherent as a piece (and not, you know, 45 minutes long, which was the duration of our chat), a lot of our back-and-forth couldn't be included. Things we talked about that weren't included were: Showgirls, his hanging out with Kitten Natividad, his bumping into Erica Gavin when she became a buyer for Barneys (using a pseudonym because she was ashamed of her days as a Russ Meyer girl!), Tyra (I expressed my dislike and he told me not to be jealous!) and that he is stopped on the street by girls praising his ability to make ANTM Cycle 2's Catie cry by telling her to go down to the docks, take in what the hookers are wearing and avoid it. A true classic stays with you for life.

What is included is mostly about his book, Gay Men Don't Get Fat, which is somewhat controversial (especially among people who haven't read it) as a result of its several sweeping generalizations. You don't have to look further than the title for one of those, but if you do, you'll find things like, "Straight conversation has no common denominators with gay conversation," and "We poofters strive to make life jolly and cute, like a chic cinematic anti-depressant." What a strange sensation it is to read about yourself and not relate whatsoever! It soon becomes clear, though, that Doonan's exaggerations are part of a device he uses to tell the truth; through his generalizations about how things are, he talks specifically about himself. (He totally knows that gay guys do get fat, hence the chapter on bears.)

In that respect, his book couldn't have been published at a better time, in this advent of shit-said shit, which also employs generalization as a medium. Conceptually, I think this is a very clever way to express your truth to an audience that will be talking back. Immediately, whenever a, "Shit Xes Say," video pops up, people look for themselves in it. Those videos' comments sections are full of, "OMG, I soooo relate!" or, "That is wrong, fail." By positing these personal observations so generally, one leaves his experiences and impressions open for debate, signaling an embrace of the fact that not everyone was going to agree with your argument, anyway. That's wisdom, whether the creators of this stuff know it or not. It's a way of making universal what is often a solitary medium that goes further to promote narcissism (we all know that the Internet is a breeding ground for that!). The effect is magical.

For that reason, I recommend listening to Doonan's opening words in the video above, because it is there that he gushes about the art of exaggeration. He's really charming, as is his book. Believe me, as someone who's stretched the definition of chunky with my actual waistline, I went into it thinking I would hate it, but it totally won me over.

Just a few more links to things I've done for work recently that were particularly satisfying:

An essay on the things I like about Downton Abbey

An Iron Lady review (Ridiculous movie!)

A War Horse review (Even more ridiculous!)

Things I hate about the part of T.I.'s Vibe story about gay people

Man, I will say this, the funniest joke I ever heard Tracy [Morgan] say during a stand-up was, ‘C’mon man, I think gay people are too sensitive. If you can take a dick, you can take a joke.’ [Cracks up laughing.] That shit was funny to me. And it’s kind of true.’ While T.I. makes clear that he supports anyone’s sexual preference, he then connects, in his opinion, a current oversensitivity among gay people with a consequential and ironic offense of the First Amendment. “They’re like,‘If you have an opinion against us, we’re gonna shut you down.’ ... That’s not American. If you’re gay you should have the right to be gay in peace, and if you’re against it you should have the right to be against it in peace.’ [Vibe]

- That five days after first reading about it, I'm still thinking about it.

Another gay movie

When we talk about gay equality, sometimes we use phrases like, "Well, if it were straight people, then..." (you can replace "straight" with any other group supposedly less marginalized than gays, depending on the speaker's point of view). Well, if Andrew Haigh's Weekend were about straight people, then...it simply couldn't exist. There would be nothing to talk about -- over the course of their 48-hour, club-spun fling in England, Weekend's two principle characters, Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) barely deviate from the subject of their homosexuality and how it relates to themselves and each other and the larger world. Peppered with male nudity and extended explicit sex scenes, this is as gay as it gets.

The message is simple: we can't yet reverse the gay/straight binary, because there's still so much to work through on our side. We're years away from something as matter-of-fact as a gay version of Before Sunrise, a film to which Weekend has been compared. Maybe it's a bit of self-obsession, but it's hard not to talk about being gay if you are gay, especially upon meeting (and hooking up with) a fellow gay guy. When the majority of the world still feels so behind, still thinks that rudeness (or worse) is a socially acceptable way to deal with a person who is different, you talk about it to cope, to reassure, to strengthen. Language is one of the few things we do have -- the belief that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on your humanity and rights confirms as much.

This film has a good grasp on what it is like to be gay in 2011, this bizarre moment of transition where you won't always get beat up for showing gay affection in public, but you could very well be confronted with disdain. By positioning two characters of the same sexuality that possess different ideas of what equality means and what makes for "radical" behavior, Haigh creates a meditation that asks as much as it proclaims. Glen is comfortable with his sexuality to an almost militant extent; Russell is uncomfortable to the point of being virtually closeted. Glen's is angry, Russell is wary. They don't always agree, but through events that took place in these characters' pasts and from what plays out on screen, they are both justified. This bizarre moment in time makes for really complicated interiors.

Weekend is quiet and intimate, and that makes sense because of how introverted communication has become. Yes, clubs are still frequented, but because of the Internet and Grindr, they are no longer a necessity (and in fact "non-scene" is sometimes worn as a badge of pride). We can get to the point of two people interacting a lot more quickly. For that, Weekend, a film about two people talking, feels perfectly of its time, in the way that Larry Kramer's Faggots and Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance must have felt very much of their time in the late '70s.

T hose books feel largely under-read at this point, and that's for maybe for the same reason that Weekend could only exist at this moment. I don't expect Weekend to have much reach in the future, or even now for that matter -- despite it oozing with humanity, there is not much allegory to be had. It is what it is: two gay dudes talking about being gay and having gay sex. The best case scenario for this document of its time is that we'll return to it in a few years, see the internal conflict, the frustration, the still pervasive homophobia, and realize that it has since become obsolete.

6/24/11

Tonight, after my boyfriend (legally, my domestic partner) cooked a wonderful dinner whose centerpiece was black cod I purchased off Gilt Taste earlier this week, we had a disagreement that led to an argument that led to me saying things I took back within minutes while we both checked our Internet-powered electronic devices re: the New York Senate gay marriage vote. He told me that he previously told himself he'd break up with me if marriage were legalized and I deferred my right to make our love official (eight and a half years is official enough for me!), and I gave him some ultimatums of my own. We went on for a while and then agreed to disagree and/or revisit the subject and/or believe in possibility. And then we spent a long time kissing and embracing after we'd heard the measure had passed. On a political level, I've never been anti-gay marriage, but on a personal level, my opinion been so clear cut. I now see the practical reasons to get hitched (no inheritance tax!) and would say my position on it is evolving. I've never felt a need to have outsiders dignify my feelings, except for the outsider that matters most to me. If it makes him happy, it's worth doing. I expect to get over myself shortly.

Regardless, I rejoice for the masses. I didn't spend the night with my boyfriend, but my friend Nick. On the way over to his SoHo loft, my livery cab driver was freaking out about a bunch of cars on Delancey that were pulled over and apparently damaged. She was freaking out about their hoods being up and them being up on tire jacks, all, "Something happened," and I thought, "No shit, lady." She seemed to mean "happened" in the most  Happening sense of the word possible. I half expected her to draw some parallel between vehicular malfunction and the Senate's decision. I just figured there was something in the road that fucked up everyone's tires and thought little beyond that as I compulsively checked Twitter and tried to express my joy adequately (having others dignifying feelings is one thing; having them dignify your existence is quite another). She was going on about these cars and then freaking out because she thought hers was sloping down on the passenger's side (in the direction of the cars that were pulled over). In my head was, "#latinacabbieproblems." She even jumped out at an intersection to make sure her tire wasn't flat and I seriously wanted to say, "Don't you know that a revolution happened tonight, lady?" But whatever: concerns are relative. We all need something to think about. Both of our minds were full: mine with how wonderful the night would be and already was, and hers with fear that she'd have to cross back over the Williamsburg Bridge and risk running over the mysterious derailing substance. Occupation is occupation.

At my friend Nick's apartment, I spoke with his friend Agi about fragrance and we drank vodka and listened to my iPod (even though it has nothing to do with homosexuals, Beyoncé's "Countdown" was exuberant enough to be mood music). At one point Madonna's "Borderline" came on shuffle and because it's so MOR sounding (despite its production coming from a man I very much admire, Reggie Lucas) I would normally skip that track but tonight I thought, "You know what? No. Tonight is the night that you let Madonna play through." We left his apartment before the song ended.

We found ourselves at Eastern Bloc, where I finally met a Twitter acquaintance (one of the DJs, Jeff), who'd eventually play Sylvester and Patrick Cowley's "Do You Wanna Funk?" That song was written after Cowley was on the brink of AIDS death and resurrected miraculously for a moment, before finally succumbing to the disease. Even in the '80s, there was gay magic. I like to think that it rubbed off and reverberated and that without figures like our hi-NRG-making brothers, we wouldn't be where we are today. Sometimes, the presence of a historical event can make you glaze over history, but our revelry was aware. At least, mine was. Some kid who clearly was not hired by the establishment played on the stripper pole, using it as a brace as he sloppily walked up the wall. Any other night, it would have been annoying. Tonight, it just seemed like a natural response.

And then we went to Stonewall, to really feel history. Hours and hours after the decision was announced, the celebrating remained fervid.

 

The excitement was contagious, not that I would have been any less excited were it not. Gay meant gay meant happy. I talked to a boyfriend of Nick's friend about South Jersey for a while and then we all decided to go home because (and this is the gayest thing about my gay gay night), I had to get up early for a training session that I scheduled at 9 am deliberately to keep me from getting wild no matter what the decision would be. Legislature starts from within. (Incidentally, that training was part of a package, and was also purchased from Gilt.)

We took a taxi to Nick's and then I was by myself, once again trying to dam my happy tears in the back of a cab and once again failing. Sometimes I'll have a cab drop me off about an avenue block away from my apartment in Williamsburg because I'll want to listen to one last song for the night. It's queer, but that's me. I got out minutes away from my place, I pressed PLAY on my phone and again was met with "Borderline." Again, I decided to let it ride out. As I put my key in the door to my building, the song ended. How perfect, I thought. Perfect on top of perfect, even.

Tyler's gay stuff

"Do what the fuck you want. Stand for what the fuck you believe in, and don't let nobody tell you you can't do what the fuck you want," says Tyler the Creator on his second proper album, Goblin. Given his permission, what the fuck I want to do is post each instance of him saying "fag" or "faggot" on this record:

• In "Goblin" at 4:01 - "I'm not weird, you're just a faggot, shame on him"
• In "Goblin" at 4:07 - (In the pitched-down voice of his therapist alter ego) "But Tyler, you're going to have to cut down on that faggot word, that's very... that's a bad..."
• In "Goblin" at 4:14 - "I'm not homophobic, faggot"
• In "Yonkers" at 1:53 - "I'll crash that fucking airplane that that faggot nigga B.o.B. is in"
• In "Yonkers" at - "I'm stabbing any blogging faggot hipster with a pitchfork"
• In "Radicals" at 0:19 - "What the fuck I look like saying I'm sorry to a bunch of fucking fags who can't potentially harm me?"
• In "Radicals" at 1:55 - "Child support ain't come, that faggot still ain't bought me anything"
• In "Nightmare" at 4:41 - "You're on the side of faggots and cock-blockers / I'm on the side of bad-ass kids and top-notchers"
• In "Tron Cat" at 3:35 - "Rashes on my dick from licks of shish ka-Bob Sagets / In some Kanye West glasses screaming out, 'Fuck faggots' / Catch me in the attic taking pictures of my dad's dick/ Drop the beat hear to make it extra climactic"
• In "Her" at 2:03 - "Last time we called, she said her relationship was rocky / Now that Mr. Fag is gone, there's nothing that can stop me from bagging her…"
• In "Window" at 5:14 - (After another voice asks him, "Can we get backstage, man?") "No, faggot, it's sold out."
• In "Burger" at 3:23 - "Go to Jimmy Fallon, like, 'Faggot, when we performing?'"
• In "Steak Sauce" at 0:26 - "I'm going as hard as Bishop Eddie Long's john after I bought a Sidekick and sent that faggot some nice pics"
• In "Steak Sauce" at 3:13 - "Faggot ass keep hating"

This is to say nothing about his use of the word "dyke" ("If you disagree lick a couple pimple cover clits from some stripping lesbian dykes that fight niggas that like to rap about those dykes that fight niggas, all right..."), "retard," "chink," "wetback," and "nigga/-er." It's to say nothing of his frequently violent imagery of both the sexual and nonsexual kind. (It's also to say nothing about his swift sense of humor, his diabolical irony or his plodding sense of storytelling, which often amounts to high-school creative writing-level exercises.)

More than most of his contemporaries outside of the ballooning collective he heads, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, his lyrics rely in hate speech, and yet to my gay ears, they are less offensive than the casual F-bomb tossed out by, say, Rick Ross or T.I. The latter phenomenon is so matter-of-fact, it feels like it could easily bespeak an entire mindset that goes something like, "Well, of course gay people are inferior..." Tyler, on the other hand, comes from a place of defiance -- his words increasingly seem calculated to spite those who'd attempt to alter them. At the very least, he doesn't seem to take his music as seriously as the masses who've produced think pieces in its wake: "Nigga had the fuckin' nerve to call me immature. What the fuck he think I made Odd Future for? To wear fuckin' suits and make good decisions?" (So much for "I don't even want any of the opinions and reviews to jeopardize my natural way of doing music," though, since he bitches about Internet feedback all over the place.)

This isn't an excuse for his hate speech, but it is an explanation for it. Like the album that preceded it, Bastard, Goblin features a running exchange between Tyler and his Camille-like therapist, but what it really sounds like is a conversation between his id and superego. Transparently setting things in the realm of the id ("Random disclaimer: Hey don't do anything I do in this song, OK? It's fucking fiction. If anything happens, don't fuckin' blame me, white America. Fuck Bill O'Reilly.") is a bit of a cheat, like conjuring magic while writing a novel or using the it-was-all-a-dream convention -- it's such a cure-all that it leaves little liability on its creator. The fact of the matter is that even if Goblin's content is largely fiction, it is still real -- at least, as much as any thought that pops into a 20-year-old's head is real.

It's fascinating to be thrust into someone's darkness so fully, and Tyler/the rest of Odd Future's laser focus on their inner visions beg for insight beyond what a pseudo-therapist of Tyler's creation can achieve. This is why they've been so heavily written about -- their music isn't necessarily fun, but voyeurism and arm-chair psychology are. Tyler's beats are largely unsatisfying from a low-end perspective, at times giving off zero sub-bass or the tiniest of an 808 tinkle, but his sparse designs are unfailingly easy to parse out and thus explain (another thing that makes them so satisfying to write about). He may get the atmosphere right, but his music is unlikely to throw you into another world, wondering how it all came about. He leaves that to his lyrics, delivered by a seriously gorgeous voice that's all gravel and no affect, like cemetery paving. No one will ever mistake "Radicals" for "Fight the Power" ("Kill people, burn shit, fuck school...I'm fucking radical, I'm motherfucking radical"), especially Tyler, who's too self-involved at this point to write something altruistic, anyway.

Is he a homophobe? Maybe, but at least he's familiar with the label (that already places him light years beyond most of his contemporaries where expressed awareness is concerned). At least here, there's something more to chew on that isn't just flawed logic holding onto vague concepts ("the sanctity of marriage") over concrete equality. At least this isn't a drag show with an agenda, like that of the Westboro Baptist Church. At least it isn't just plain idiocy. Here we have someone who couldn't possibly understand the shame of being called a faggot when you are one, using the word for his own benefit ultimately (Odd Future without the hateful imagery would be like Cannibal Holocaust without the animal mutilation: largely ignored). He says he isn't homophobic, but then he says a lot of things. Leaving it up to us to sort it all out could be a cop-out, but it could just as easily be a sign of respect.

Loving Lance Loud

 

As a result of HBO's Cinema Verite, I'm a little obsessed with An American Family -- or at least, the idea of it. The whole thing -- all 12 hours of the first modern reality show that aired on PBS in 1973 -- is too slow-moving to hold the interest of a modern attention span. That's a sort of retrospective irony for its subjects, the Loud family, who griped about their portrayals after being excessively edited*. If anything, they could have used some more.

Lance, the oldest son and arguable star of the show, does a little bit of that kind of complaining in the clip above, but mostly he's just his fantastic, flamboyant self. He's often credited as being the first out gay man on television, and it is impossible to underestimate his importance. A disciple of Warhol from an early age, he got to live out the artist-thinker's philosophy better than just about anyone of his time, experiencing 15 minutes as we'd come to know it. I watch him in action, being his big, floppy, gay self and I'm amazed at his courage. My views on gay representation have changed considerably over the years -- I used to think that we needed as many traditionally masculine gay guys in the spotlight to show society that we aren't all freaks...and then I thought about it, and came to the conclusion of: fuck that. Obviously, everyone should be who they are, but there's not a greater need for one type of gay over others. Why bend to expectations? At times, nothing is more confrontational than a faggot. In a way, exhibiting that without reservation requires so much courage, it's butch.

Lance carried the heavy burden that pioneers do. He went on to front a band called the Mumps that did the C.B.G.B/Max's Kansas City thing but faded out, partially as a result of him being unable to shake his association with An American Family. He then became a pop culture journalist. In a heartbreaking Family follow-up Lance Loud! A Death in an American Family, Lance's former editor at Details, David Keeps, discusses how Lance dealt with being just about the only openly gay guy in pop culture for so long: "He wore fame, and he wore being a role model, and he wore being a gay man, and he wore being a brave soul like it was a piece of chiffon, when in fact it was really a very heavy piece of armor for him. And it weighed a lot. And it was very, I think, difficult. He never really showed it, but I think it was difficult for him to be that person and to trudge through life. Because it had been so easy for him at the beginning. He was a full-blown entity. He was a force of nature to be reckoned with. By the age of 20, he had done his masterpiece. He'd created it by merely existing and letting someone capture it on film." I'd be willing to bet that no one read Lance better.

That movie, by the way, chronicles the days leading up to Lance's death in 2001, as he suffered from HIV and hepatitis C. He requested that the crew come to film him one last time. "I can't leave the planet without some form of closure form the series..." he explained. Though he had very pronounced moments of modesty (in a different documentary that followed up with the Louds 10 years after An American Family, he described himself as "just a normal guy that was made brief and to the point by editing"), he clearly was bit by the attention bug. He was a show-off, a public goofball that, regardless of what conflicts he tangled with inside, clearly thought highly of himself. These days, we'd call someone like Lance Loud a narcissist, but he came up at a time when no amount of self-love was enough for a gay man. He was a visionary, and 38 years after An American Family introduced him to the world, it's still catching up.

*Note: I even assembled a mess of quotes that have continued this complaining tradition, almost 40 years later.

Things I learned from Hot Stuff

Alice Echols' Hot Stuff, recently out in paperback, is maybe my favorite music book ever. Instead of being a straight history of disco, it examines the genre in the various ways it reflected and helped mold '70s culture. There is something I didn't know on virtually every page (and I love disco enough to have already done a ton of research on it). Below is a list of the things that sent my pen underlining. I don't have much to add to a lot of these items because they are fascinating on their own. Book report time!

Scanning my life

I spent last week between jobs and attempting to organize my life. I wasn't entirely successful. I learned what I already knew: I have so much crap that I never, ever want to throw away. Below is some of it, scanned. Aren't you lucky, getting to look at my hoarding?

Now that I've made this post sound as unappetizing as possible (no cats were flattened in the making of it, I assure you!), the answer to a recurring question I've been asked more than once -- "What do you look like with hair?" -- is below, among many things that I think are actually interesting...

A story about my old job

I already posted this on Twitter, but it deserves a heads-up here since this is my life we're talking about: Friday was my last day working for VH1. It's very surreal of me to  leave a place that for a while, I never thought I would (I was coming up on my fifth year). While my goodbye post conveyed the bittersweetness of my departure, as I get further away (even as far as a weekend), there is more and more relief. When I start my new job at TVGuide.com next week, I will no longer be locked into one network's programming lining and creating (what amounts to) advertorial content (as much as I put into making it not read as such) for it. I have some pop-cultural blind spots that have come as a result of focusing on one network (so often, the last thing I wanted to do upon after spending my day watching TV was to watch more TV) and I look forward to fixing my vision.

Every job has its frustrations and while I'm happy to leave a lot of them behind and never so much as consider them again, there's a story I've been sitting on for a while that I'd like to share. It is a tale involving someone who had no idea how to do my job telling me how to do my job, of the rare clash I had with on-air talent (one of maybe two in the hundreds of delightful weirdos I encountered and wrote about), of an insanely late-night email exchange gone extreme, all drizzled in the essence of homophobia. I hadn't thought about it for a while, but when I was going through my inbox before leaving VH1, I reread this epic thread and was mostly pleased with my writing. For that reason chiefly, but also based on the belief that if you see something even remotely anti-gay, say something, I am sharing this exchange.

I'm not here to make friends, but I'm also not trying to throw anyone under the bus (see what I did there?), and for that reason I have redacted the particulars that would make this person immediately identifiable. This is not meant to humiliate anyone, but to give a little slice of my former professional life and the complications that can arise when your job is to write about the output of the company you're working for.